The Nollywood Movie ‘Mama Drama’ is Good Drama
“You think it’s easy watching another woman carrying what I am supposed to be carrying. Carrying my child? .. I am being ridiculed because I am the one being called barren. I am the one not woman enough to carry your child”–Mena Adelana.(Mama Drama 2020 Movie)
I watched the movie when I logged into my Netflix account and found it was number one in my country for that day. After trying to find relaxing content that night without success, I went for Mama Drama.
Mena (Osas Ighodaro’s Character) has difficulty carry her pregnancy to term. Her PA offers to help (for a fee) but things get crazy when Kemi (Kehinde Bankole) loses her own son.
A Nollywood Drama
Mama Drama starts as a stereotype Nollywood movie. A mother-in-law with a caustic tongue and an intense dislike for her daughter-in-law who has the misfortune of being a separate tribe. Mama Drama also explores inter-tribal marriage as in Nigeria, inter-tribal marriages are difficult to pull off.
As a person married to someone from another tribe for at least a decade, I still get asked rude and intrusive questions by total strangers. I still ignore, explain, apologize, and many times put some people in their place either with a look or some schooling on love means.
Mama Drama touches on the frequently difficult relationships wives have with their mothers-in-law. Even though this theme is a reoccurring one in Nollywood Movies, it still plays out beautifully in Mama Drama.
Hardly anyone gets married and expects their mother-in-law to like them. So it seems like a familiar story. I was already mentally yawning in boredom. Expecting it to be a story about monster in-laws and long-suffering daughters-in-law, but I stayed because of the promise of Shaffi Bello’s electrifying drama after the first scene.
Another cliché is Mama Drama starts with a Nigerian house party scene. Nigerians love parties, but too many movies now with similar beginning scenes. It is not such a bad thing though, it is a great way to ease the viewers into the movie.
The Mama Drama Story
It is an almost perfect story, without a perfectly tidy ending, and it ends like most real-life stories end. Even though I had hoped for Mena to get pregnant and carry her baby to term at some point in the story, this didn’t happen. This also nudged me to check my cognitive bias. Being a birth mother doesn’t make you a mother.
It’s a tale of one child and two mothers, and it explores what is still a taboo topic in Nigeria; Surrogacy. Most people still see surrogate mothers as real mothers even though the DNA of the child they carry is not the same as their own. The biological mother is a bystander. A woman once declared that if her brother uses a surrogate mother, she will never accept such a child. To many people, surrogacy is no better than adoption. Adoption is still frowned upon, and surrogacy is scarcely accepted. I once heard of a mother-in-law who urged her son to marry the surrogate mother of his child as the second wife. She refuses to believe there is no biological tie between the surrogate and the child. So making a movie about surrogacy is exemplary.
The Cast of Mama Drama is a Star-Studded One.
Osas Ighodaro as Mena
Kunle Remi as Gboyega
Kehinde Bankole as Kemi
Shaffi Bello as Mama Adelana
Femi Adebayo as Dotun
Chinyere Wilfred as Aunty Nkem
Opeyemi Aiyeola as Ronke
Adunni Ade as Simi
I love Shaffi Bello, and her ability to contain herself in roles where some other actresses run crazy. She has poise and panache.
In this movie, however, she is neither poised nor self-contained. She still dressed impeccably as she delivered the audience what they desired. Drama.
I equally admire Kehinde Bankole for her excellent acting. Even though her character (Kemi) didn’t get smothered under the aura of having, influential people are bosses, and we don’t get her perspective fully, she still shines very brightly.
Chinyere Wilfred’s character, Aunty Nkem was also very impactful in making Mama Drama a must-watch. Her affection for her niece is consistent and intense.
Kunle Remi (Gboyega) as the dotting husband, steadfast and supportive is heartwarming to watch.
The movie is about Mena and Gboyega, a wealthy Nigerian couple who are having difficulty giving birth. Kemi her Personal Assistant offers to help them. But things don’t go as smoothly as they imagined. Kemi loses her only child while still pregnant by Adelana’s baby. It is a heartbreaking scene that I expected the death of the child to become the focus of the movie from thereon.
I hoped at this point we get to see how Kemi processes this grief. Her pain and her thoughts.
But somehow, Mama Drama doesn’t happen for several years after. She gets swept away by America and her husband Dotun (Femi Adebayo), who is impressed by the Adelana’s shininess.
The Good Drama
- The movie starts on a high note and maintains the tempo until the end. It’s almost believable, even the court scenes that are usually cringe-worthy in Nollywood Movies is surprisingly captivating. The right court lingo is used, and the lawyers Olive Emodi and Adunni Ade appear confident.
- Nollywood is known for drama, and all the actors put their firmest foot forward. Chinyere Wilfred was one of such actors. Her role as an aunt was precise in all her scenes. Perhaps because I am Igbo, everything she said resonated with me. The concern for her niece, the advice and wisdom she dispensed as if there were no camera. I felt the love like it was real. Osas Ighodaro (Mena) was also outstanding in her vulnerability, her focus on becoming a mother, despite all the obstacles that came her way.
- Mama Drama is loosely based on a true story and is told respectfully.
Not Overly Good Drama
A few scenes in the movie didn’t shine too brightly.
- They didn’t explore the feelings of Kemi. It was like we only get to see her through Adelana’s eyes. She also didn’t get her day in court because we never see her take the witness stand. She was portrayed as the bystander in all of this. The class divide is vividly clear.
- The appalling poverty her PA lives in before the surrogacy money came in. No mattresses in their bedroom. For someone who was working as a Personal Assistant to a woman whose family own their plane. The contrast is extremely marked.
- Throughout the movie. At the mention of the baby boy, they break into smiles and dance with joy.
- There is an inconsistent number of miscarriages. Sometimes the actors mention 6 other times 8.
Plot Twist.
When I saw the picture of Shaffi Bello as the cover image on Netflix, I assumed wrongly that she was in the centre of the drama and for a while, it seems so. But the drama is between Mena and Kemi.
Conclusion
In the end, the movie is far from a cliché, because surrogacy is not something we are open about as a society. I'll rate this movie a solid 9. If not for anything, for telling a story that needs telling.